DOJ Erred Judge Who Beats Trump’s IRS Lawsuit, Settlement | Today’s news
The US Justice Department criticized the judge who punished President Donald Trump and his lawyers for acting in “bad faith” in his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and his controversial settlement, saying her ruling was “riddled” with errors.
In a filing in federal appeals court in Atlanta, the Justice Department escalated its attack on U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, a Miami judge who ruled in July that Trump’s unprecedented lawsuit against the IRS was an attempt to rig the judicial process. The department accused Williams of playing politics and urged an appeals court to remove her from the case.
The settlement ended the lawsuit without payment to Trump, but gave him and his company complete immunity from audits for past tax returns. The settlement also included a now-scrapped $1.8 billion “anti-gun” fund that was scrapped amid bipartisan outcry.
Williams’ decision barred Trump and his administration from citing the alleged settlement in any future regulatory or legal proceedings, saying the deal had “no viable basis in law or fact.” She also commended his lawyers for presenting the case.
Acting Assistant Attorney General R. Trent McCotter said in a 43-page filing that Williams exceeded her authority in concluding the settlement was inappropriate. McCotter also claimed that Trump did not benefit financially from the deal.
“The plaintiffs were seeking at least $10 billion in this lawsuit, but they settled without getting any money,” McCotter said. “Curiously, the district court repeatedly characterized the parties’ agreement as awarding plaintiffs ‘billions of taxpayer dollars’ — even though the agreement expressly prohibited plaintiffs from receiving any funds.”
Democrats argued that the anti-gun fund would be used to benefit Trump allies and supporters, including the people who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The appeal seeks to overturn both Williams’ order and sanctions. It’s the latest twist in a lawsuit Trump filed in January over the 2019 leak of his tax information to the press, making him the first president to sue his own government. The Justice Department, which represents the IRS and usually vigorously defends claims against the government, never responded to the lawsuit.
The judge said it was clear that Trump and his administration intended to settle all along, finding that “the matter was brought for an improper purpose — to obtain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.”
In a filing with the appeals court, the Justice Department said Williams was “grasping at straws to find evidence of collusion that did not exist.”
“The district court erred as a matter of law in failing to appreciate the Justice Department’s broad and unreviewable settlement authority, which undermined the court’s entire collusion theory,” the filing states.
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